A fourth generation (4G) communication system, which is a next-generation communication system, aims to provide users with services of various Quality of Service (QoS) levels at a data rate of about 100 Mbps. Particularly, present-day 4G communication systems are advancing in order to guarantee mobility and QoS and to support high-speed services in Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) communication systems such as wireless local area network systems and wireless metropolitan area network systems. Representative examples include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 communication systems. The IEEE 802.16 communication systems adopt Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)/Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) schemes to support a broadband transmission network in physical channels.
In the broadband wireless communication system based on the OFDM/OFDMA, such as the IEEE 802.16 system, a base station performs multi-access communication with a plurality of Accessing Terminals (ATs) by transmitting and receiving OFDM symbols. The transmission interval from the base station to the AT is referred to as a Down Stream (DS) frame, and the transmission interval from the AT to the base station is referred to as an Up Stream (US) frame. Herein, the DS frame and the US frame are time intervals including a certain number of OFDM symbols. The OFDM symbol includes a plurality of carriers in a frequency domain. A bundle of the carriers is referred to as a subchannel. The base station allocates the subchannels to the plurality of ATs, and the ATs each receive and transmit signals over at least one allocated subchannel. A bundle of subchannels allocated to one AT is referred to as a burst.
To transmit and receive signals through the allocated burst, the AT needs to acquire physical location information of the allocated burst. The physical location information of the burst is contained in a DS map message and a US map message. Before transmitting the signal in the burst, the base station broadcasts the DS map message and the US map message to its connected ATs. The DS map message and the US map message are the requisite information for the sake of the communication between the base station and the AT, but act as overhead by competitively occupying data and resources. In other words, the data rate of the system can be raised by reducing the resources occupied by the DS map message and the US map message. Thus, what is needed is a method for reducing the overhead caused by the map messages.